A Delicious Revolution
If this isn't a sign of an impending apocalypse, I don't know what is: On the back of all Kit-Kats (or Kit-Kats for those used to the trademark slanty writing), there are instructions. These instructions do not, however, provide the consumer with scrumptious, Kit-Kat-related recipes, such as Kitty Litter or Kit-Kat Fun-Time Dippin' Sticks. They only serve to explain how to open the package.
Step 1: Place thumb here. (A dotted oval is used to ensure proper thumb placement.)
Step 2: Place index finger here. (Again, dotted oval.)
Step 3: Tear here. (This time, an arrow combines forces with a dotted line to direct you to the optimal tear point.)
Step 4: Obtain blowtorch. (Self-explanatory.)
Step 5: Place candy over exposed eyeball. (Horizontally, to include both eyes.)
Step 6: Melt into eyes, and enjoy! (The stinging sensation that you will experience is your enjoyment.)
Did Hershey's realize that its Kit-Kat was being passed over because it was seen as the enigma of the chocolate wafer world? Left unsold on store shelves for only the boldest of adventurers to try and open? I assume that the decision to include directions was, like anything else, profit-driven, and that someone theorized that the candy wasn't being purchased because nobody knew how to get it open. Buying a Kit-Kat was a pointless, cerebral exercise. Like buying a jigsaw puzzle that couldn't be opened.
But that all changed with the advent of the "Tear Here" arrow. Suddenly, the American populace couldn't get enough Kit-Kats. Following the "Tear Here" revolution of the late 1990's, jubilance could be heard in convenience marts across the nation, as Americans opened things that many had predicted man would never open.
- "Ohhhh, tear heeeere. So you don't have to eat the glossy foil-paper. Boy, is my small intestine going to be relieved!"
- "I guess gutting you with a fishing knife wasn't the most efficient way to access your sweet, sweet innards. Praise the Lord!"
- "If those Goddamn Trojans had had a "Tear Here" arrow, I wouldn't have to deal with you every weekend!"
"What are you talking about, Daddy?"
"Eat your candy!"
The Quarterly Grain Report Presents: Actual Quotes!
"Harriet Tubman is not Adolf Hitler." --Professor Edward Friedman
The Rotating Blades of Misfortune
Fun Fact o'the Day: When a box fan operating at its highest setting (three) tumbles out of a window, something bad is about to go down. Depending on where your outlet is, the fan
may plummet with enough force to disengage itself from its power source, assuming your cord is short enough, and is at a higher elevation than the fan itself. However, if these conditions are not met, prepare to be bombarded with enough razor-sharp plastic shrapnel to thoroughly spoil your day. Such was the fate of a certain box fan that I used to know.
One sweltering afternoon, a strong, vengeful wind cast the box fan out of the window, catching the usually stable contraption by surprise. But the fan courageously decided to carry on, never ceasing to circulate air even on its decent to the ground. This proved to be an ill-advised move by the cocky box fan, for no sooner had it reached the floor when the awkwardness of its landing forced its own protective cage into its inner rotating blades. My stomach churned. The blades splintered violently against the sturdy plastic enclosure as I watched in horror. Horror that was getting ever warmer with the lack of air circulation. As it began to vibrate uncontrollably on the floor, I realized that the box fan wasn't going to stop. With every passing second it was drawing nearer total self-annihilation. It would rather kill itself than return to its post unable to perform. I tore its power cord from the socket, and let the fan settle down. After a few seconds, the extent of the damage became clear. One entire blade was gone. The protective cage, now hanging loose on one side, repeatedly struck the frame as the crippled blade tried to rotate normally. This resulted in frequent, embarrassing spasms stemming from the blade imbalance.
The fan would scream at me from time to time. "You shoulda let me die... did I ask you to help me?...
Answer me!... I was supposed to
die there... but you, you piece of
shit!... now look at me...
You look at me!... I'm a
freak! (sobs) No one can love me like this. Hell,
you can't even
look at me. People can't love a fan anyway, but still... I can't circulate air...
What good is a Goddamn box fan, if it can't do the one thing it was produced to do?! (more sobbing) That's it. I've had enough of this fucking charade."
And with that, the box fan leapt from the window and impaled itself upon a broomstick.
From the Human-Arrangement Archives
Rumor has it that if one were to ever travel abroad, no other culture has yet been able to grasp the concept of forming lines. In England, for example, they instead form another, equally efficient figure, a
crowd, and the ones who are best able to stab their way through are rewarded with a warm slice of apple pie at the end. And in Saudi Arabia, the alternative to the line is typically
death by firing squad; a truly unique method of distribution that has reddened the face of many an unaccustomed tourist.
Even in the US, line-formation has greatly evolved from the days in which women, in order to stand in a public line, were required by law to balance some type of carnivorous, feathered vertebrate atop their skulls. This was both to ensure lady-like posture, and to protect against the acquisition of VD. In a custom originating in mid 16th-century Germany, birds of prey were placed near the woman as she slept to insure against the contraction of syphilis. Failure to protect the lady from infection would commonly result in the death of both the bird and the woman, for they were thought to be in allegiance with Lucifer. Lucifer's cloven hooves, while extremely durable, were known to be the source of all carnal diseases. However, support for this theory began to decline in 1753, when a series of experiments confirmed the notion that syphilis is caused not by the cloven hoof of Satan, but by women voicing their opinions in public.
An Enchanting Tale of Love and Vaccinations
Have you ever wanted to take about 13 or 14 puppies, put them in a burlap sack, and just beat it until it stops making noise and secreting gross fluids? Me neither. No matter. Though I suppose one might have the urge, depending on what they ate for dinner that night. For example, this very night I consumed three hard boiled eggs, a raspberry pie, a lemon wedge, a lemon pulley, a lemon lever, and a milkshake that wasn't so much a milkshake as a line of coke. As many of you probably know (but failed to tell me), this has proven to be a combination similar to the coal miners strikes of the early 20th century. That is, unproductive, disgruntled, and vomit-inducing. My body is currently filled with angry, underpaid miners with no health insurance. Or fuctioning lungs. The chambers of my heart are no longer filled with blood, but metaphorical anger and regret. Regret is pumping through my veins in the same fashion as an East-German woman pumps iron. But not through her veins, mind you, unless she happens to possess some sort of tolerance to iron-filled veins that the rest of the populace either doesn't have, or hasn't built up yet.
A Tetanus vaccination is merely an injection of water that has been sitting around in rusty pipes for too long. The kinds of pipes that run through your neighborhood church (unless it's one of those new churches that look like small convention-centers, and don't seem like any sort of idol worshipping goes on there, but it does. It does in spades). Pipes that contain water that kinda tastes like blood or something. So you, as a naive young child, think that it must just be the blood of Jesus that they dumped down the bathtub after the people who had communion couldn't finish it all. (This is the logic that flows through the mind of a young child who has no idea what he's doing in church to begin with, other than the fact that it has something to do with shaking old, scary, skeleton-esque hands.) This is what a Tetanus shot really is. I came to this conclusion on the occasion of my most recent "Tetanus booster." The logic being,
I've never had tetanus, and now my arm fucking hurts. Shouldn't science have advanced to the point where it's not necessary to recharge your disease immunity every few years? Apparently not. Well, as long as I have this serum flowing through me in the highest concentration that it's going to be for the next decade, I might as well get some use out of it. I'm off to the junkyard.
What follows is an actual exchange between an early Christian missionary who has been assigned to save the souls of inhuman cannibals, and an inhuman cannibal.
Missionary: Oh, how these wretched souls live! Feasting on human skin and bones! Drinking the blood of their brothers! Satan, release these heathens from your evil clutches, that they may see the true God, and bow down before Him! Please have mercy on them, O Lord! They know not what they do! Come, come young man. I shall show you the true error of your ways! Accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your almighty redeemer and savior, and the eternal kingdom of heaven awaits you! Now eat his flesh, and drink his blood, and your sins are forgiven!The man sits in silence for a few moments, then clubs the missionary and roasts him over the fire. It was truly a glorious day for the elder tribesman. For with his victory over the most recent intruder, he has reached the sacred plateau of 57 consecutive missionaries clubbed and devoured, eclipsing the previous mark of 56, set in 1941 by Joe DiMaggio. Everyone in the tribe remembers that magical year.
I would greatly enjoy interviewing a transient, hobo, or panhandler, if I were positive that I would not be assaulted/raped. I would ask them if they actually have a daily agenda, or if they just fly by the seat of their pants (or lack thereof). I would inquire if, waking up on a Tuesday, Randy whips out his pocket notebook and runs down his to-do list:
- Yell a lot
- Insist upon telling a passerby my misguided world views, all of which have been irrelevant since 1983
- Eat half of a taco (or whatever may be sticking out of, or buried inside, my garbage can. Hey, it is my can, I know what's been in it. It is not disgusting! You're disgusting! With your shoes and clothing. When the street sweepers clean up the flames of your childhood, it's gonna be you that's covered in gravy and jackets with broken zippers! I can't wear this, someone is going to say something. Well, maybe not out loud, but it'll be in their eyes. I can't deal with that.)
Then I'd run away. Some people's solution to the homeless problem is to simply shout at them, "Get a job!" But honestly, who would be willing to hire an incoherent, smelly man who is a multiple sex-offender and can't form a sentence that can be understood without someone else saying it another way and then adding "...is that what you mean?" Even if you stick one of them in a suit and tie, it will only accentuate how funny they actually look and behave. It would form such a stark contrast to everyone else who wears suits as to make him the subject of even more ridicule. Now, if it were a pinstripe suit, then maybe it would be more understandable. The fears of any passersby could be alleviated with a simple explanation of "It's his zoot suit." This by no means explains why a man would be in such a condition, or even makes sense for that matter, but it provides John Q. Public an explanation that he's satisfied with, and can think about for a while, because he recognized the word zoot along with suit, but didn't really understand why that would account for the outlandish behavior. Maybe he had intruded on the filming of a Mentos commercial. That must've been it. Now let's never speak of this again.
Halloween is fast approaching, and with it come lavish contests of man's gourd-butchering prowess. While one fellow carves Happy Halloween into his pumkin, his neighbor one-ups him by intricately carving the preamble to the US Constitution into his, thereby severely weakening the overall stability of the pumpkin's internal structure. This inevitably results in a massive cave-in, house fire, and subsequent arrest of five no-good punks who won't see the light of day for three years, thank God. I'll bet we can put to bed the mystery of who has been digging up my garden, too! Sons of bitches.
This Day in History!
February 22, 1944President Franklin Roosevelt, in an effort to ration the nation's consumption of delicious, salty soup-crackers, introduces to congress the Cracker Perforation Act, requiring that all crackers be produced with a minimum of 3.5 pinholes per square inch of cracker. Congress passes the bill within an hour, and US forces reach the summit of the heavily defended Mt. Sarabachi on the island of Iwo Jima the following day. President Roosevelt said of the Act: "I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we as a nation are willing to sacrifice the solidarity of our delicious soup-crackers to bring about victory, so help us God."
